


the thing about memories

by dirgewithoutmusic



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/F, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:53:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24529429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirgewithoutmusic/pseuds/dirgewithoutmusic
Summary: The thing about memories is that when you conjure them up they’re magic, they’re imagination, they’re ghosts. Remembering something that happened and something that didn’t feels the same on your skin.Lydia remembers Allison Argent.
Relationships: Allison Argent/Lydia Martin, Lydia Martin/OFC
Comments: 9
Kudos: 84





	the thing about memories

**Author's Note:**

> Answer to tumblr prompt: Allison Argent + Memory

_8\. Memory + Allison Argent_

The thing about memories is that they are things that happened. 

Lydia had eaten poached eggs and leek-fennel sausage for breakfast. Lydia’d bought the sausage at their local farmer’s market on Saturday, which had been hot and blue-skyed and bracing. Last Christmas, she and Jenny had gotten tipsy on her mother’s punch and snuck off to make out in the pantry, sloppy and carefree and joyous in ways Lydia was still learning how to be. 

Those were memories. They were things that had happened. She called them up, now and then, and she could smell the fennel, feel the glare of a wide blue sky, feel rum and joy fizzing in her chest. 

The thing about memories is that they weren’t happening now, so who’s to say that they happened at all? 

The thing about memories is that when you conjure them up they’re magic, they’re imagination, they’re ghosts. Remembering something that happened and something that didn’t feels the same on your skin. 

Lydia remembers Allison Argent. 

She remembers Allison being fiercely competitive in PE and quietly competent in academics. She remembers beanies were a good look for her. She remembers the terror of not knowing what was going on, of watching Allison come apart at the seams, of feeling her own self crumble. She remembers them both coming out the other side. 

Lydia also remembers holding hands in the high school hallways, which she thinks they really did– best friends held hands sometimes, in hallways. 

She remembers how soft Allison’s skin was, how Lydia attributed that interest to professional jealousy, how Lydia told herself she liked touching girls better than touching boys because girls were cleaner, right? Softer, tidier, good-smelling. Didn’t everyone prefer to press close to their best girl friend than to dream of kissing a man with stubble? Surely that was a universal experience. 

But Lydia also remembers calling each other from their cross-country colleges, comparing stories of cute TAs and cheap midnight meals. She remembers things that never happened– summer roadtrips to the Grand Canyon, blasting Dixie Chicks with only 50% irony; Allison’s first day at her first job, Lydia helping pick her out an outfit over the phone. 

The thing about memories is they’re not real– they’re remembered. The things that happened back then are just as real, now, as the things that never did– aren’t they? Both of them live now in Lydia’s head and nowhere else. 

Lydia imagines Allison’s graduation, awkward small talk with Mr. Argent, skirting around talk of her applying music theory and physics to banshee magic. She imagines maybe finding an apartment together, in a city somewhere neither of them know; adventurous take-out and red wine while Lydia does her nails and Allison sharpens her knives. 

Allison was beautiful, as a teenager, but Lydia is an adult now and she never saw Allison gross on day three of a bad cold; never saw her before coffee in the morning, just in a too-big shirt and tangled hair; never saw her get her first grey hair and take it in stride. But she can imagine it, so well it feels like remembering. 

Lydia remembers being brave enough, even though she knows she never was. She remembers knowing, back then, what it meant that she stared so much at her best friend, thought about how soft her skin was– but she didn’t know, not then. 

In the plain, quiet daylight of the present, Lydia is standing on damp grass. The carved stone in front of her doesn’t look back, because it’s stone, because the girl buried below it died ten years ago. 

“Hey Allison,” Lydia says, and squats down. She doesn’t sit, because the grass is damp and she likes these pants too much for that. “I’m getting married tomorrow. Jenny asked and I said yes.”

The thing about memories is that you make new ones. 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at ink-splotch.tumblr.com


End file.
